


Sun is Cold and Rain is Hard

by ronqueesha



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universes, F/M, First Meetings, Love and Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-28 02:50:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10067162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ronqueesha/pseuds/ronqueesha
Summary: This is a story of two broken people meeting for the first time, and the consequences that ripple through centuries.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I have two main Fallout 4 characters, Zoe and Nathan. While I normally don’t spend any time thinking about the relationships between my various RPG characters, Fallout 4 gives an interesting opportunity to play “what if?” with them. What if random chance decided which parent carried baby Shaun to Vault 111, and thus which one became the sole survivor? How would things turn out different for these alternate worlds?

Some visual aids for anyone curious. Pre-war Zoe and Nathan.

 

**JUNE 15, 2071.**

Loud music, low lights, the air hazy with the smoke of two dozen cigarettes and the twinge of alcohol from everyone’s breath. And all around him, the murmuring din of people spending their evening together, enjoying their lives free of worry or conflict, at least for a few hours in this little downtown establishment. This was where Nathan felt closest to home.

Outside the windows, a summer thunderstorm rocked through Boston, sending powerful booms through the tiny bar with near-divine regularity. Hot, fat droplets of water smacked into the large glass panes along the main wall, adding to the noise and music that filled the smoky room. The few cars brave enough to drive in such a soup passed by with only the glow of their headlights to mark their passing, the beams flashing through the mist created by their desperately spinning tires.  Now and again, a few of the crowd who sat near the windows gave a drunken cheer every time a brave driver passed by, giving an inebriated sendoff to the brave souls who tried to navigate downtown in such terrible weather.

Inside, Nathan remained dry and warm, his right cheek annoyingly so. The heavy scarring that marred most of his right side didn’t like being dry, and voiced its displeasure by making him itch like the goddamn devil. The heavy smoke and choking atmosphere of the bar irritated his pitted and cracked skin, but he dare not scratch it. This wasn’t the time or place to indulge in the momentary soothing sensation of rubbing his fingers over his minor deformities. He was surrounded by people just like him, soldiers and warriors who all served at the pleasure of Uncle Sam. Some were even wounded in action just like he had been, missing parts of their bodies and minds in the line of duty. It didn’t matter where they came from or which branch they served, they had all congregated in this downtown bar to be among their own kind. Hell, even the music that played from the shitty old jukebox sang of glorious American wars past. Or did it protest against them? Nathan had never been good at 20th century history, so he could never tell which songs were pro-American exceptionalism and which were satire. The point was that he couldn’t scratch his scars, not here. He couldn’t show weakness in front of people who had suffered much worse than him and come out the other side.  

That didn’t stop his brain from sending more and more irritating signals to the patches of mottled and pitted skin, however. And the more he ignored it, the more his mind drifted back to the agonized memories of fire consuming his body, the smell of his own flesh cooking inside his damaged power armor, and the sensation of losing feeling in his right arm as he was cooked alive. In that instant, he had gone back to Alaska, where snow mixed with the blood of countless Chinese soldiers and smeared all over his faceplate. His gun had overheated and melted, and his body lay trapped under the burning bulk of the Chinese troop plane he had shot down. His screams mixed with the warning tones from his dying armor that mixed with the deafening groan of hundreds of tons of burning airplane fuselage.  

 _No. Stop that._ Nathan told himself. As he did so, his eyes squeezed shut and he took a long drink of his terrible, yet cheap, beer that tasted like lawn shavings mixed with drain water. After the second hard swallow, the screams and pinpricks of horrific memory retreated from the bitter taste of the present.  Several doctors and a boatload of pills usually did the trick in banishing those memories. But sometimes good old grain alcohol was what Nathan needed to calm his ragged nerves and itchy scarred skin.

He shook his head for good measure, then raised his hand to signal the bartender for another bottle of whatever they were serving for veterans that night. The ‘tender, an older woman with a waist larger than she was tall, nodded his way and gave a smile as she reached into a cooler and fished out what he ordered.

“Forty-five fifty.” She said as she placed the bottle in front of Nathan. In response, he nodded and reached back for his wallet, letting the rough fabric of his green fatigues rub against the growing discomfort in his burned skin. He pulled the necessary forty-five dollars out of his wallet, then stopped. His nerves, already on edge, tingled down his back as he fruitlessly searched his wallet and then his pocket. Nothing.

“Ah, shit.” Nathan muttered to himself. Fifty cents short. The tubby bartender kept her hand on the bottle as she waited, and nodded toward several other orders in the interim. She would not hold forever.

“Look, can I, uh, start a tab?” He asked with a thin smile and held out the insufficient cash.

“Sorry, hon.” She said with a genuine frown and pulled the bottle away. “Got burned on too many outstanding debts. No tabs.” And with that, she returned to filling other orders. The bottle previously meant for him went to the hands of a near-blackout drunk servicewoman who miraculously held onto her money long enough to make the transaction.

The words “got burned” echoed in Nathan’s mind as he watched her walk away. Why the hell did the bartender have to use those exact words to his face? Did she not see the scars? The air somehow grew thicker with smoke and heat as he pondered, bringing the prickling itches back to his right cheek. The strumming rhythms of the terrible music grew into a pulsing heartbeat the longer he dwelled.

Once again, he could feel the tongue of flames as they consumed the inner workings of his power armor, and his flesh along with it. He recalled with perfect clarity how he leveraged his suit’s failing joints against the permafrost below and PUSHED against the Chinese plane that had him trapped. Blood leaked from his mouth as he put more effort into that one motion than he had ever moved in his entire life. Smoke filled his helmet as his suit failed to keep up with his demands, shorting out, sparking, and igniting even further as its joints were pushed past their limits. Fire ate his right side as his left arm kept a burning airplane from crushing him to death. Oh how he had screamed.

“Hey, patches.” Someone said from behind Nathan, again pulling him away from the fire and blood-filled hell of the past into the smoke-filled purgatory of the present. “Mind if we take that seat?”

Nathan turned around to see a group of four, two men and two women, dressed similarly to him in Army fatigues. But each one adorned with gleaming medals and other flashy brand-new symbols of service. None of them looked older than late teens, barely old enough to drink. Probably just past basic training and celebrating their freedom after six weeks of brutal instruction and endless PT. The next generation of brave American soldiers who would soon be shipped off to fight and die at the government’s pleasure.

To his side, only one other stool at the bar remained empty. No doubt they had just chosen him first before they cleared out other people.

“Patches?” Nathan asked as he turned, but did not stand up.

“Yeah. Your face. Look at it.” One of the women said as she obnoxiously chewed her gum. “Besides, you been sitting there forever. Let someone else have a turn.”

“I’m pretty comfortable right here. Why don’t you find another seat?” He tried being polite, he really did. Usually, Nathan’s off-color right cheek was what people first noticed about him, and they drew attention to it for their own reasons. For the most part, people remained courteous about it, even polite in an attempt to save his feelings. But now and again, some drunk or punk-ass kids came along to try and hurt him.

“That ain’t fair, and you know it!” One of the boys said. “C’mon, get up! Let some of the new blood have a chance to relax for once!”

“How about you turn around and find someplace else? Let’s not do anything you’ll regret.” He still didn’t stand, but he did give them a stare that anyone in the US military, from any branch, would recognize. The kind of stone-faced glare that said “fuck off” with a threat of violent reprisal.

Instead of sparking an immediate fight like what happened in most movies he had watched, Nathan just got the four youngsters, people who had probably spent less time around weapons than Nathan spent in a frozen latrine up north, to roll their eyes. “Fuckin’ freak.” One of them said before the group turned around and moved to another part of the little bar.

But if the rolling eyes and hurtful words had been a subversion of the movies, what happened next was right out of a classic film.

Because as soon as the rude kids started turning back, Nathan saw HER walk in from the door. Accompanied by no one but a massive umbrella to keep out the rain, she seemed to appear from thin air at the front door. Her appearance caused the rampaging wind outside to gust into the bar, sucking out some of the smoke and bringing a torrent of water into the carpeted floor. The people seated closest to the entrance yelped in shock, but could do nothing to stop the wind and water from arcing into their seats.

Against all odds of the weather, the new arrival managed to close the heavy door behind her, returning the bar to its usual stillness a moment later. Nathan had to make sure to not gawk as he watched her put her soaked umbrella on top of a pile of others left by the other patrons. She wore boots and long green pants like everyone else tonight. But instead of a thick green shirt to cover her chest, she wore a simple white tank top tucked into her waistband. The exposed skin on her shoulders displayed a massive amount of tattoos in an intriguing art gallery, flowing from her neck, over her shoulders, and down both arms like a masterful canvas.

And then she started walking toward him, intent on the lone empty stool that sat right next to him.

A part of Nathan’s mind, a dark little corner he tried to ignore, whispered in his mind to be wary of this tattooed woman. She would probably treat him just as poorly as those kids who still stood within earshot. And if she didn’t, she would get a good look at his scars and turn away. He told himself not to hope, because there hadn’t been a reason to hope in a good long time.

But she didn’t turn. She instead took a long look at him as she continued walking forward, a satisfied smile crossing her cheeks. Nathan caught himself staring at her lips for a bit too long, then reminded himself to lower his gaze. Oops, too far. Don’t stare at _those_ , either. But, he had to admit, they looked VERY nice.

She seemed to float above the sticky, damp floor of the bar as she made her way closer. And the more she moved, the more he saw of her tattoos. Skulls and flames on her upper chest. Angels and demons fighting to the death on her right arm. A naked woman covered her left bicep. The new arrival turned back to her umbrella before sitting down, just to make sure no one swiped it, and he could see hints of even more ink on her back.

And then she was next to him, and it seemed like the entire bar disappeared.

“What’s good here tonight?” she asked Nathan, but she might as well have been talking to a brick wall. He used all of his concentration to stay locked with her eyes. Her hazel eyes, which seemed to glint with a mirth and zest for life that he didn’t think possible.

“I, uh, um.” Nathan babbled as he struggled to regain control of his mouth. Like his eyes, it took considerable effort to keep his jaw muscles under control. Her lovely eyes seemed to catch on to his momentary discomfort as well, sizing him up in the span of just a few fluttering heartbeats. “It’s… uh… pretty cheap. Pretty bland. Pretty…pretty…” In an effort to keep his jaw from flopping in some barbaric display of caveman attraction, Nathan tried to rest his chin on the bar in a nonchalant motion. He tried to raise his left knee, move his left elbow to the bar itself, and put his head in his open palm. The perfect pose for a guy pretending to be cool and indifferent to the world, when in fact he could scarcely believe someone like her had chosen to interact with someone like him.

His elbow missed the bar by a wide margin, which caused his lolling jaw to flop forward and impact the polished wood with the force of a heavy punch. It made a loud enough SMACK for everyone in the bar to stop their conversations and turn in his direction. Even the jukebox came to sudden and undignified halt.

For a hellish amount of time, all eyes focused on Nathan Bhatia, the scarred soldier who couldn’t even pretend to act cool to save his life. It was just like up north, when his throat scratched and burned from the combined torture of screaming like a raving lunatic as he struggled to survive, while at the same time breathing in smoke from his near-dead power armor. Metal and blood became his world as his vision turned red. Blood had seeped into his eyes as he pushed hard enough to pop blood vessels. It also leaked from his nose and down his lips as his screeching and burning armor sent sparks of heated metal into his face. The helmet’s eye visor cracked and popped as a piece of airplane shrapnel pierced it, stopping mere inches from his fleshy eyeball.

After what felt like hours of struggling and dying, he felt another force pushing against his ruined armor. Then another, and a third. Before he knew it, the burning debris lifted away, to be replaced by the white-suited faces of combat medics who recognized the broken human being under the metal. Their eyes bored into him as they pulled his destroyed corpse away from the site of his torment, full of feigned hope, but equally full of emptiness and sorrow. After that, his entire world became painful reconstructive surgeries, physical therapy, and the growing itchy discomfort as his skin healed into its new, mottled, hairless reality.

And then she laughed. And the world went back to normal.

A lilting, joyful, wonderful sound that banished the pain in his head and the dull throbbing in his hand. It stopped the itching, it even made the rude teenagers disappear into a mist of memory. He focused on the sound, and pulled himself back up.

Before he knew it, Nathan had returned to his stool, the jukebox returned to life, and the bar went back to its murmured chaos. Drunken pratfalls were nothing new, and the novelty of his fall wore off in the span of just a few anxious heartbeats.

But she hadn’t stopped smiling.

“You okay?” She asked as soon as Nathan’s bruised ass found its place once again.

“Never better.” He responded before he realized what he had said.

“Good.” She said, still grinning, as she reached a slender hand into her pocket and pulled out a thin wallet made of shiny, immaculate leather. “Had me worried for a sec.”

“I’ve been through worse.”

“I can tell.” She said, but she didn’t say it in a way that hurt. If anything, he relished how her eyes drifted to his cheek, then over the rest of him. She saw where he had been hurt, but it didn’t matter. Not one bit. “I’m Zoe, by the way.” She said as she put the wallet in her left hand and extended her right palm toward him.

“Nathan. But most people call me Nate.” He returned the gesture, and this time did nothing to hide his boyish grin as his burned right hand touched hers in a friendly handshake. She was so warm, so full of vigor, so wonderful to finally contact. He had no idea why, but being here, next to Zoe, Nathan felt like he could finally ignore the memories and discomforts that haunted him.

“Okay, Nate.” Zoe said as she pulled a small stack of 100-dollar bills out of her wallet and smashed them onto the bar’s counter. “So tell me, what have you been drinking tonight?”

It continued to thunder outside, his cheek itched, and the bar was still full of indifferent assholes, but Nathan only focused on Zoe and the way her smile made all the bad parts of the world go away.

 

 

**TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN YEARS LATER**

Cait spotted it first, then whistled for Nathan to follow her lead.

Like most buildings he had known from his old life, very little remained of the bar he had met Zoe in. Nothing more than a few piles of dusty red bricks, half a wall that still miraculously stood against rotten timber supports, and a hoard of debris had become yet another gravestone in a world full of them. The last marker of a world long dead.

Small motes of dirt blew around Nathan’s feet as he stood inside the gaping hole that used to be the front door, covering his faded, musty pants with orange dust. The beating sun forced a torrent of sweat down his brow as he trudged forward, careful to not disturb the fragile remains all around. With a well-practiced hand, he pulled his stained jacket’s arm over his face to dab the moisture away before it obscured his vision.  

“I thought you said this was the finest pub in the old downtown. This pile of shite doesn’t look very special to me.” The Irishwoman complained as she stepped closer to Nathan, all the while poking at various loose bricks with the barrel of her shotgun.

“Just… gimme a sec.” The sole survivor of Vault 111 said as he took another experimental step into the blasted ruin. The counter he sat behind two centuries ago no longer existed, nor did the dozens of seats and tables that had once filled the place. Instead, only piles of broken wood left markers of what once remained. When he touched one, it crumbled away into yet more dust that blew away into the still air.

A few rings of rusted metal on the ash-covered floor marked the positions of the stools. They, too, fell apart when he tapped one with his boot. Not even worth salvaging. It took a lot of careful walking around the broken remains to find the stool he had once used, and the one Zoe sat on as they talked the entire night away.

In that instant, he was back in that place, two hundred years in the past. The rain still roared, the jukebox sang, and the crowd still murmured, but none of them held a candle to Zoe. He still remembered her laugh, and how it never seemed to disappear as they got to know each other. She, in turn, told jokes of her own. Funny stories and a few flirtatious lines that forced a short, barking guffaw from him. One of the first times he had truly laughed since Uncle Sam sent him home from Alaska. He had been infatuated with Zoe from the moment he laid eyes on her. When she made him laugh, she took his heart.

Back in the present, Nathan opened his jacket and reached into an inner pocket, one he always kept safe. His fingers brushed against a small thorny bramble, careful to not damage the soft petals on top, before he took a firm grip on it. A rose, a small sickly flower he plucked a few weeks back when passing through an overgrown plot of land that used to be someone’s garden, sat tucked and folded in his jacket. Nathan retrieved it with as much sincere gentility as he could muster, making sure to not muss the flower up any more than it already had been.

Once back in the light, Nathan could see how much the ravages of time had changed the flower, just as it had the world. The spines that had once covered the vine were massive, and had to be individually cut by a knife before he could handle it. One half of the flower’s base stuck out like a tumor, bloated and off-color, but still holding petals that gloriously advertised the flower’s original form. Its color was also not red, but an off-color pink and mottled white, with flecks of bright orange in various spots on the petals and vine.

It was beautiful, in its own unique way. Just like she had been.

“Happy anniversary, Zoe.” Nathan said as he placed the rose down on top of the heap of dusty wood and metal that used to be the bar counter. It crumbled to dust as the rose made contact with it.

He didn’t know how long he stood there, but just as his legs began to cramp from the stillness, Nathan felt a warm hand cover his shoulder. Cait had moved to his side, and regarded her companion with a kind, yet concerned, expression.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” Nathan said as he sucked in a hasty, muffled breath. Heavy with water and barely-held emotion. “Thanks for coming with me.”

Cait smiled. The world didn’t disappear when she did, but there was a twinkle in her eye that he knew was reserved just for him. After everything they had been through together, especially that harrowing time in Vault 95, he knew he could count on her, and she on him. And just maybe… together they had found reasons to hope again.

“Yeah, whatever.” She said with her usual brusque manner, though the undertones of mirth and warmth were clear to anyone who had spent any amount of time with Cait. She then turned her warm, comforting hand into a fist and lightly tapped Nathan’s shoulder. “C’mon, we’re a day’s walk from Bunker Hill. Bastard at the bar owes me a bottle of vodka.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Nathan Bhatia said as he turned away from the dust and debris of the forgotten past. The rose remained where he had placed it.

 

 

**IN ANOTHER WORLD**

 

“I thought you said this was the best bar in downtown Boston.” MacCready said as he poked a small pile of bricks with the barrel of his rifle. “Doesn’t look like anything to me.”

“Just… give me some time.” Zoe said as she gingerly stepped over the dusty remains of the bar. It had been a long and arduous search through the ruins of downtown to find this place, and she wouldn’t let a few words of good-natured complaint deter her now. A week ago, the two of them had gotten to talking about their favorite places to drink outside of Goodneighbor. Mac relished his memories of a city made out of the ruins of an aircraft carrier, and the home-made ale sold in a pub down in its bowels. But that place was hundreds of miles south, and much too far away to visit just now. Zoe had told him of this bar, how it was one of the few buildings in Boston where she could really cut loose and be herself, even if the actual product they sold tasted like grass shavings. She did not tell him about the real reason she remembered it so fondly.

The baking sun made her bare tattoed shoulders ache as she bounded from brick to brick, wary of the dull, dry wood that sat everywhere. Dust kicked up with every motion the two of them made, turning the hot, still air into a choking cloud of tiny debris. When she tried to catch her balance against a fallen beam, it crumbled to dust, which almost sent Zoe falling face-first into a broken mass of brick and glass. She managed to catch herself at the last moment, but that didn’t stop a metallic hand from reaching out and placing itself on her stomach, preventing her from falling any further.

“Be careful, ma’am.” The gen 1 synth that always followed her around relaxed its grip as soon as it realized she was no longer in danger. “These ruins are unstable.”

“No, really?” Zoe snapped back at the machine. Ever since taking on the mantle of Director following Shaun’s… passing, the Institute demanded that she remain protected at all times. She remained their primary field agent on top of her new duties, and many of the nerds belowground were worried about something terrible happening to her. They originally insisted on a courser accompanying her, but Zoe rejected the idea. Instead, she took a single Gen-1 synth as a bodyguard, and a handful of relay devices to bring more if any situations got dire. The Institute cared nothing for the fact that she had people on the surface that looked out for her, people she… loved.

A withering glance told the synth to back away from her, then she looked in MacCready’s direction. The mercenary continued to half-heartedly poke through the rubble, though his eyes remained locked to the dark shadows and craggy openings that the ruins provided. His jaw, covered in a thin sheen of stubble and sweat, locked against his upper teeth as he took short, controlled breaths. If anyone tried to ambush their little group, he’d react in an instant and shoot them down. The training and instincts of a man who had experienced too much, and gotten too little in return.

“Gimme a hand.” Zoe said to him as she stepped away from the slippery pile. She didn’t need assistance to climb down, but she still enjoyed the support. MacCready’s tense demeanor dissolved as he turned away from the broken remains of the old world and toward Zoe. He even smiled as he offered a chivalrous hand for her to take, like a gentleman from an old video tape. She gladly accepted, which left the ever-present synth in the dust. Literally.

“I don’t see anything worth salvaging.” Mac said as Zoe spent a bit of excessive time standing next to him, listening to his confident breaths and relishing the warmth that emanated from his chest. Even though the midday sun baked them both, the world always seemed a little too cold when she stood away from him. “You sure this is the place? The way you talked about it, I pictured some kind of… well… not this.”

“Back in the day, this was the best spot in Boston. Maybe the whole world.” Zoe responded with a wistful sigh as she looked toward the ruined counter, and two rings of rusted debris that sat before it. Two hundred years ago, that was the spot she sat in when…

She closed her eyes and let herself be swept away by the memory of meeting Nathan. Of being intrigued by the scarred soldier who had an adorable wit and an inability to keep his eyes off her numerous tattoos. The moment her eyes met his, she knew something special lurked deep in his soul, and she spent many years of her life exploring the complexities and wonderful mysteries of that man.

The day she told him he would be a father… oh, she didn’t think she would ever see a human being so happy ever again. It was like all the burdens and terrors of the world disappeared as she watched Nathan jump around their kitchen, high fiving the furniture, and letting out several exuberant “woo!”s and “Hell yeah!”s. When the time came to call his parents and let them know the good news, he had finally succumbed to joyful sobs, the kind full of wet eyes and exhausted muscles, but also smiles and laughter. The sounds that came from the other end of the phone put her husband’s rapturous exclamations to absolute shame.

Back in the real world, new tears welled in Zoe’s eyes, but the heat of the day kept them from falling down her cheeks. They formed salty pools at the corner of her vision as she continued to stare at the spot that changed her life forever.

“Happy anniversary, hun.” She said under her breath.


End file.
